U.N. Repeals Its '75 Resolution Equating Zionism With Racism

By PAUL LEWIS,

Published: December 17, 1991

The official count found 111 nations in favor of repealing the statement and 25 nations, mostly Islamic and hard-line Communists, voting against. Thirteen nations abstained. Seventeen other countries, including Egypt, which recognizes Israel, and Kuwait and China, did not take part in the voting.
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Correction Appended

The United Nations General Assembly voted overwhelmingly today to revoke the bitterly contested statement it approved in 1975 that said "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."

The official count found 111 nations in favor of repealing the statement and 25 nations, mostly Islamic and hard-line Communists, voting against. Thirteen nations abstained. Seventeen other countries, including Egypt, which recognizes Israel, and Kuwait and China, did not take part in the voting.
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For the United States, the heavy vote in favor of repeal was a demonstration of its diplomatic power. After President Bush called for the repeal in September in a speech to the General Assembly, United States embassies around the world were instructed to put maximum pressure to secure the repeal. The 111 votes recorded today were about 11 more than the United States mission to the United Nations had predicted last week.

The vote reflected the shifting political currents of recent years, the Persian Gulf war in particular, which split the Arab and Islamic worlds, and the changes in the former Soviet bloc, fostered by the collapse of Communism.

In 1975, in an effort to curry favor with the Arabs and embarrass the United States, Moscow took the lead in pushing through the statement on Zionism, which was one line in a longer resolution.

With the end of Communism in Europe, countries there have by and large all re-established diplomatic relations with Israel in the last year. The Soviet Union and the rest of the former bloc, including newly independent Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all voted for repeal today. The only Communist countries voting against repeal were Cuba, North Korea and Vietnam.
Asians and Africans Back Vote

Many Asian and African nations, including India, Nigeria, Singapore and the Philippines, which voted for the Zionism resolution in 1975, reversed themselves today.

The vote divided the Islamic and former nonaligned movements. While no Arab country voted for repeal, Bahrain, Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman and Tunisia all were absent from the vote. Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen were among those voting against repeal. But there was no indication that those Arabs voting against repeal made much of an effort to persuade other states not to go along with the United States initiative.

The one-line resolution repealing the Zionism statement declared that the Assembly "decides to revoke the determination contained in its resolution 3379 of 10 November 1975." It did not use the words "Zionism" or "racism" in the resolution.
Applause for Vote

The 1975 statement referred to in the repeal decision said that after reviewing other international resolutions linking Zionism with South Africa's apartheid system, the General Assembly "determines that Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination."

Applause broke out in the General Assembly as the result flashed on the big electronic voting board high on one side of the hall. And delegates leapt up from their seats and rushed to congratulate Israel's Foreign Minister, David Levy, who led his country's delegation at the session.

At a news conference later, Mr. Levy described the vote as "removing a terrible blot" and said the world community was "sobering up," with many countries "shifting their positions."

A total of 85 countries, or just more than half of the 166 members in the United Nations, co-sponsored the repeal resolution, including the Soviet Union and all its former communist allies in Eastern Europe that voted the other way in 1975. The outcome was also at the high end of American expectations. On Friday, United States officials were predicting a maximum of just more than 100 votes for repeal but warning that there could be a 20 percent margin of error.
Enhancing the U.N.

Both the United States and the spokesmen for the Arab countries voting against repeal saw the vote as important for both the credibility of the United Nations and for the Middle East peace talks. And their addresses drew loud applause from delegates.

Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, who led the American delegation at this afternoon's session, argued that repeal would bring the United Nations better into line with the realities of the post-cold-war world.

Equating Zionism with racism, Mr. Eagleburger said, "demonstrated like nothing else before or since, to what extent the cold war had distorted the United Nation's vision of reality, marginalized its political utility and separated it from its original moral purpose."

Repeal, he said, could "only help and not hinder efforts currently under way" to bring peace to the Middle East, removing a 16-year-old obstacle to the United Nations' playing a more significant role in the peace process.
The Arabs' Voice

Speaking against repeal on behalf of the Arabs, Lebanon's representative, Khalil Makkawi, warned that it would hinder the peace process by whetting the appetite of "Israeli extremists wishing to pursue their policy of creeping annexation."

It would also, he went on, "fuel the passions" of those Arabs "who believe the whole peace process is an exercise in futility which gives Israel more time to expand and achieve its revisionist Zionist project."

But he said the Arab group "will revise its assumptions" if the sponsors of today's repeal motion can now persuade Israel to comply with the Security Council's demands that it cede occupied Arab lands in return for peace.

In a further sign of the discomfort that the repeal has caused the Islamic world, today's session was presided over by the United Nations representative from Honduras, Roberto Flores Bermudez, rather than by the world organization's president, Samir S. Shihabi of Saudi Arabia, who is of Palestinian origin and who was present for the morning session today.
Furor in September

In September he caused a stir by leaving the podium when Israel's Foreign Minister addressed the General Assembly.

The 1975 resolution on Zionism was approved in a smaller General Assembly, with 72 countries voting in favor, 35 against and 32 abstaining. Three countries did not take part in the vote.

Apart from the Soviet Union and its former East European allies, countries that switched their votes from support for that resolution to support for repeal included Brazil, India, Mexico, Nigeria and Yugoslavia.

Those that have now voted twice in favor of equating Zionism and racism include Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Iran and Iraq.

In seeking support for repeal, the United States and its Western allies have used a variety of arguments to persuade wavering countries to join their camp, diplomats say, many of them based on a belief that today's vote would increase the pressure on Israel to compromise in the American-sponsored Middle East peace talks.

All argued that Resolution 3379 was out of date because it was a product of the cold war, pushed forward by the old Soviet Union and embraced by a militant third-world nations that saw the United Nations as a forum for attacking capitalism and propounding a new economic order that would redistribute wealth from rich to poor.

Correction: December 18, 1991, Wednesday

Because of an editing error, an article yesterday about the repeal of a United Nations resolution equating Zionism with racism misstated the vote of the Philippines and Singapore when the resolution was adopted in 1975. Both countries abstained.

The official count found 111 nations in favor of repealing the statement and 25 nations, mostly Islamic and hard-line Communists, voting against. Thirteen nations abstained. Seventeen other countries, including Egypt, which recognizes Israel, and Kuwait and China, did not take part in the voting.
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